Think your iPhone is safe because you locked it with the digits of your mother’s second cousin’s birthday? Think again. A new program from a Swedish security company can crack your passcode in seconds– though it claims it only sells the software to police and military clients.

Micro Systemation says “business is booming” thanks to their phone cracking software. According to Forbes, the “small company has grown close to 25% in revenue year-over-year, earned $18 million in revenue in 2010 up from $12 million the year before, and doubled its employees since 2009.” They released this video this week to promote their program:

http://youtu.be/u1Gb5stnc54

The company states that they seek weaknesses in the phone’s software, rather than backdoor vulnerabilities, just like hackers jailbreaking their phones. These tactics, and endless research to keep up with the constant stream of new smartphones, has enabled Micro Systemation to not only crack passcodes, but also download and unlock data.

But once security programs are bypassed, the passcodes are simply cracked with “brute force”: the software guesses every single combination of numbers possible. The company’s marketing director admits that longer passcodes are harder to crack, and sometimes take so long that law enforcement just give up.

So longer passwords are a simple way to increase security? I’ve heard that before:

[Image from XKCD]

[via Forbes]

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